Detroit Area Study, 1956: Orientation on Moral Issues in a Metropolis and The Meaning of Work (ICPSR 7320)

Citation

Angell, Robert C., Kahn, Robert, and Weiss, Robert. Detroit Area Study, 1956: Orientation on Moral Issues in a Metropolis and The Meaning of Work. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2010-07-28. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07320.v1

This study of 797 adults in the Detroit metropolitan
area provides information on their attitudes toward work and their
motivations for working, as well as their orientation toward
many social and political issues. The study was a combination
of two separate studies: ORIENTATION ON MORAL ISSUES IN A
METROPOLIS by Robert Angell, and THE MEANING OF WORK by Robert
Kahn and Robert Weiss. Respondents were asked about the
importance of work in their life, the things in their job that
made them feel important, the things they wanted from their
job that it did not provide, the other areas of their life
that made them feel useful, and the people in their lives that
influenced their choice of occupation. A number of questions that
focused on women working outside the home probed respondents'
feelings about how a husband was affected by a working wife, and
if there were kinds of jobs that women should not have. Other
questions probed respondents' views about what the United States
should do in the event of an attack by the Soviet Union on a
western European country, a parent not allowing a child to recite
the Pledge of Allegiance in school, the proposed racial integration
of schools, appointment or election of government officials, effecting
changes in the United States Constitution, trial by a jury or a
judge, ways to effect world peace, the most important problem for
the United States in the future, and a Communist revolution in
a Latin American country. Additional items explored respondents'
opinion of the Detroit newspapers and the Detroit newspaper strike,
and their satisfaction with their neighborhood. Respondents were
also asked about their political party preference, as well as their
use and ownership of telephones. Demographic variables specify age,
sex, race, education, place of birth, marital status, number of
children, nationality, religious preferences, occupation, family
income, length of residence in the Detroit area, home ownership,
length of time at present residence, and class identification.

More information about the Detroit Area Studies Project is available on this Web site.

Angell, Robert C., Kahn, Robert, and Weiss, Robert. Detroit Area Study, 1956: Orientation on Moral Issues in a Metropolis and The Meaning of Work. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2010-07-28. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07320.v1

2018-02-15 The citation of this study may have changed due to the new version control system that has been implemented. The previous citation was:

Angell, Robert C., Robert Kahn, and Robert Weiss. Detroit Area Study, 1956: Orientation on Moral Issues in a Metropolis and The Meaning of Work. ICPSR07320-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2010-07-28. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07320.v1

2010-07-28 Full suite of statistical packages were added/updated.

1984-05-10 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Notes

Data in this collection are available only to users at ICPSR member institutions.

The citation of this study may have changed due to the new version control system that has been implemented.

This study is provided by ICPSR. ICPSR provides leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of analysis for a diverse and expanding social science research community.